"The Common Sense of Political Economy and Selected Papers and Reviews on Economic Theory, vol. I and vol. II"

“Social reformers and legislators will never be economists, and they will always work on economic theory of one kind or another.  They will quote and apply such dicta as they can assimilate, and such acknowledged principles as seem to serve their turn.  Let us suppose there were a recognised body of economic doctrine the truth and relevancy of which perpetually revealed itself to all who looked below the surface, which taught men what to expect and how to analyse their experience; which insisted at every turn on the illuminating relation between our conduct in life and our conduct in business; which drove the analysis of our daily administration of our individual resources deeper, and thereby dissipated the mist that hangs about our economic relations, and concentrated attention upon the uniting and all-penetrating principles of our study.  Economics might even then be no more than a feeble barrier against passion, and might afford but a feeble light to guide honest enthusiasm, but it would exert a steady and a cumulative pressure, making for the truth.  While the experts worked on severer methods than ever, popularisers would be found to drive homely illustrations and analogies into the general consciousness; and the roughly understood dicta bandied about in the name of Political Economy would at any rate stand in some relation to truth and to experience, instead of being, as they too often are at present, a mere armoury of consecrated paradoxes that cannot be understood because they are not true, that every one uses as weapons while no one grasps them as principles.”

“If we engraft the current meaning of the word "economy" upon its etymological meaning , we shall arrive at "the administration of the affairs and resources of a household in such a manner as to avoid waste and secure efficiency" as our conception of "Economy."  "Political" Economy would, by analogy, indicate the administration, in the like manner, of the affairs and resources of a State, regarded as an extended household or community, and regulated by a central authority; and the study of Political Economy would be the study of the principles on which the resources of a community should be so regulated and administered as to secure the communal ends without waste.”

“But neither can anything we desire be got without money, or what money represents, i.e. without the command of exchangeable things.  All the things that we so often say "cannot be had for money" we might with equal truth say cannot be had or enjoyed without it.  Friendship cannot be had for money, but how often do the things that money commands enable us to form and develop our friendships!  …  But even "waiting" requires money, if not so much as marrying does.  In fact, a man can be neither a saint, nor a lover, nor a poet, unless he has comparatively recently had something to eat.  The things that money commands are strictly necessary to the realisation on earth of any programme whatsoever.  The range of things, then, that money can command in no case secures any of those experiences or states of consciousness which make up the whole body of ultimately desired things, and yet none of the things that we ultimately desire can be had except on the basis of the things that money can command.  Hence nothing that we really want can infallibly be secured by things that can be exchanged, but neither can it under any circumstances be enjoyed without them.”

“Now the leap by which this reasoning lands us in labour as the sole constituent element of value appears to me so surprising that I am prepared to learn that the yet unpublished portions of Das Kapital contain supplementary or elucidatory matter which may set it in a new light.  Meanwhile the analysis appears to be given as complete and adequate, so far as it goes, and I can, therefore, only take it as I find it and try to test its validity.  But instead of directly confronting it with what seems to be the true analysis of the phenomenon of exchange, I will follow it out a little further, and we shall see that Marx himself introduces a modification into his result , in such a way as to vitiate the very analysis on which that result is founded, and to lead us, if we work it out, to what I regard as the true solution of the problem.”